Archive for the ‘Paula Palermo’ Category

For your younger kids, try Alien Assignment (free). It is a fun scavenger hunt app that uses your device’s camera. When the alien needs something, your child must find a household item that fits the description and take a picture of it. Fun and learning at the same time.

It’s never to early to learn about healthy eating. Go Nini (free) is a helpful app that makes a game of making good food choices. Foods that are “Go”, “Slow” and “Whoa” help teach children about the types of food they should eat anytime, sometimes, and rarely.

For ages 8 and up, try StoryLines (free). Think of it as a digital version of the “telephone” game. The first person chooses a common phrase and passes the device to the next person, who draws a picture of that phrase and passes the the device to the next person, who must write a caption for that picture. And so on up to 9 players. When the last person is done, you review the storyline to see how different the last caption is from the first phrase. It’s both fun and educational.

9-11. Weird but True (free with 0.99 add-ons for additional fact packs) is a National Geographic app that provides lots of little known and downright strange factoids about any number of topics like lobsters and astronauts.

And of course for the little ones just starting out with basic learning, the Garanimals Learn, Play, Share app (free) teaches letters, numbers and shapes by association.

Visit geekabyebaby.com for some unique bedding, bibs, clothes and more that will amuse all you gamers, rockers, and Doctor Who fans. Lots of options for customizing your bedding, baby hats and burp cloths. Who wouldn’t love a Yoda or Minecraft Creeper hat for their little one, or a Star Wars diaper bag?

Getting ready for a vacation? There are lots of easy ways to book flights, hotels and rental cars online, but what about booking the things that make the trip truly memorable? What are the best things to do and how do you get them arranged ahead of time? Try peek.com.

Peek is a new site that makes it easy for you to see what great fun activities and excursions are popular at your destination and lets you reserve your tickets before you leave home.

Walking tours, water sports, museums and sporting activities are just some of the options you can explore and decide on while planning your trip. There are also testimonials from well known folks and Peek community members on how they love to spend their time at places like Washington DC, Cape Cod, New York, Cancun and Orlando.

Tired of the beach, the pool or the theme park? Perhaps there’s something you’ve never done before that would be a thrill to try. Ziplining? Kayaking? Ghost tours? Activities like these could make it your best vacation ever. I recently spent a day off in Austin and I can testify that my Bridge Bat kayaking tour was the absolute coolest thing I did. Who knew?

Peek is fairly new so the content isn’t as comprehensive as it will be over time, but if your destination is there, it’s an excellent way to get the inside scoop on the best things to do so you can come back refreshed and rejuvenated. And hopefully with some really good stories to tell.

There are a lot of ways to share your good times on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Yelp are just a few places where you can post your favorite places and where the action is.

Findery is a new app that wants to take location/social relationship to a different level. Rather than just look at the menu items people like or the photos and comments about places traveled to, Findery wants to collect input about everything from the reason why a park, or park bench, is worth stopping at, or what that funky building is on the corner where you are.

This app is a collection of stories. Imagine if lots of people shared their personal impression or recollection of a place, so that you can know the real story. What was there once? What notable thing happened there? Or why you should stop and have a look rather than walking by.

Findery is new, so it’s still building the database of places. However, the idea of not just getting a picture of a place, but a note with the factoids that bring it to life, makes this a much more interesting app.

Findery is available as an iPhone or web app – the Android app is on its way. When you join, you can create, follow, or just explore your neighborhood or where you’re going to visit. As a frequent traveler, I love the idea of being able to find out, on a personal level, what makes a place interesting or worth visiting. And what not to miss, especially if it’s a little bit odd or off the beaten path.

Planning a car trip this summer? Kids in the car for any longer than an hour (or maybe less) is enough to make you panic just thinking about it. Here are some apps that can help you keep them occupied and give you some peace of mind.

Kids just want to have fun. Mom Maps app (free on Android, $2.99 iPhone) will provide you with all the kid-friendly places near where you are. Play spaces and kid restaurants are easy to find with this app.

Road Ninja is a free app that will help you find rest areas, restaurants and interesting places to stop along the way.

Having these apps at the ready will help ensure that your trip time goes a little more smoothly. And while they won’t guarantee that you won’t have some surprises or misadventures along the way, they will hopefully keep the whining to a dull roar.

We love our kids’ art. Somewhere in my attic is an artist’s portfolio folder filled to the brim with all of the preschool and kindergarten artwork of my first child. There isn’t one for my second child. Yep, the novelty had worn off by child number 2. Sorry sweetie pie!

Even so, I still have plenty of creations from both of them from their school years. I just can’t bring myself to throw them away. I finally did throw away my daughter’s dinosaur diorama from third grade. She’s 19….

Here are a few apps that let you archive the memories without having to keep the originals.

ArtKive is an lets you take photos of your artwork (or any other items of interest), tag them, upload them, and print photo memory books. The app is free, but the books run $25 for 20 pages.

ArtMyKidMade (free) is similar but links with Dropbox, Evernote or Facebook for storing and sharing. Anything you share on the Art My Kid Made blog could be featured in their Artist of the Day pick.

Another option is Keepy. This site lets you upload photos, artwork, and other mementos to the site, make recordings that tell the story, and share it all with friends and loved ones, who can also reply or comment with text, voice recordings or videos.

Keepy is free for the first 31 items but also offers premium and ultimate plan options for $1.99/month for 101 images and $2.99/month for unlimited.

So get out those folders, baskets and boxes of fabulous art and get clicking. You now have permission to throw away the originals without guilt. Well, maybe save a few.

Looking for a way to turn a terrific photograph into an even more terrific memento or piece of art? Here are a few ways to take you beyond simply enlarging and framing your prized photos.

A really fun site is AllPopArt.com. Turn a headshot into a superhero comic book cover, a Warhol-style pop art poster or comic-style artwork. They are a bit pricey but if you’re looking to immortalize your pet or family members in a artsy, fun or funny way, there are a lot of creative ideas here. It’s fun just to browse the possibilities. And there are some great Mother’s Day gift ideas. Hint hint…

Another Photo-to-Art option is MyDavinci which offers options for transforming any photo into photo sketches, pop art, caricatures, a DaVinci sketch, and more. Gorgeous.

Looking to do your part to help be kind to the earth? How do you know which products are greener than others or what company is rated better in terms of ethics and safety?

What if there was an easy way to look up a product and find out if it is organic, fragrance-free, or produced using best practices like fair trade, recycled material, or honoring human rights?

GoodGuide.com is a website that can give you all of this important information about thousands of products, from diapers to laundry detergent to pet food to cars. Using a ratings system, their team of environmental scientists evaluate the products on a scale of 1 to 10 so you can easily tell which products make good sense environmentally, and which ones you might think twice about.

The site is very easy to use and provides lots of good information. You can customize the criteria to reflect the categories that mean most to you, whether it’s health, environment or social responsibility. And if you use the mobile app, you can scan the product code in the store and know right away if the item fits the bill. If you install the transparency filter on your web browser, it will reveal the GoodGuide rating of any item you shop for online.

This is pretty handy stuff and very enlightening. Get the real scoop on the product’s footprint, not just the marketing babble.

Baby on the way? Congratulations! Such an exciting, expectant, and nerve wracking time, especially if it’s your first. So much to learn, so much information about what to do and not to do. It can be overwhelming. But, while there’s no app for the hard parts, there are plenty of apps that can help you prepare.

Hello Baby app for iPhone is a great way to learn about all of the stages of growth of your baby during pregnancy. It’s full of images and information that can help you understand the magic that is happening in the womb.

There is also the What to Expect apps for both pregnancy and the early years. This trusted series of books has been invaluable for so many of us as we navigate all of the stages of babyhood.

Sprout ($4, iPhone only) is another really helpful app for information and tips on pregnancy, weight tracking, prepping for doctor visits and what to know about all that’s happening to your body right up to timing your contractions.

Baby Bump is another app that not only provides information on your pregnancy but also has a social networking component so you can share your experiences with other moms-to-be.

And if baby is here, how about something to help with nursing, and tracking your newborn’s progress in those critical early weeks and months? WebMD Baby provides many resources and really useful information about sleep, growth, feeding, and milestones to help you through the fraught early days of caring for your child.

I wish these apps were available when my kids were born, especially in the middle of the night when you just didn’t want to call mom, again!

Are your phone and keyboard starting to look a little icky? Ever wish you could just run them through the wash? I’d rather not think about just how dirty and germy our devices get. Ew. Obviously we can’t hose them down with bleach and disinfectant, so here’s a few safer ways to get and keep your gadgets a little bit cleaner.

The best tool for starters is a can of compressed air to clean out the crumbs between keys and blow off dust. Another option is to keep a small paintbrush handy to do the job. And for your screens, the simplest way to clean it is a lint free cloth slightly dampened with water (distilled if you have it). Q-tips dampened with a 50-50 mix of alcohol and distilled water gives you a little more cleaning power and help remove the sticky stuff.

Taking it to the next level, there are products available that are specific to some of these tasks. CyberClean is a cool putty-like product that dirt, dust and germs stick to as you dab it on your device.

Some other products out there include a Roomba-like vacuum that rides over your device and picks up the dirt and germs. There are also various wipes, brushes, suction devices and cleaning solutions. Here’s Mashable’s rundown of some of the more interesting ones.

And to keep your iPhone or iPad clean every time you store them, try the NueVue device cases that have built-in anti-microbial protection.

A clean device is a happy device. Regularly wiping and blowing out of debris is a good practice. But be careful with vacuum cleaners – they can suck the keys right off your keyboard. Ask my Fn key.